NGD SL2 Pro satin Black

[LaoWai]

Having both an empty soloist case, and a bad case of GAS, I decided to head over the local Jackson dealer and take a gander. Hey, well what do you know, a few SL2 PROs in stock.. nice. Grabbed the quick silver and ... WTF, the fret ends were sticking out & as sharp as a razor, the binding was popping out because the either the frets were too long or the wood had shrank on its trip from Indonesia to New Mexico. Well that was a crap first impression! Grabbed a satin black, and oh baby, come to daddy! Master builder Rashid was having a great day! Wonderful neck with a smooth ebony fretboard, so nice, worthy of its namesake. After pointing out the flaws of the Quick Silver, I was able to drive a hard bargain. Now my empty case is full.

FMIC get your feces consolidated and do some QC! Being a Jackson fanboy, I was willing to weed through to get the good one, others may be more tempted to move on. Your marketing these at a premium price, we expect a premium product!!!!

Anyway, for those of you looking at the SL2s. I certainly recommend doing a test drive, and a thorough check.

I’ll do a side by side with my black SL2H once I get this home to China.

DSC_0141.jpg

[SimonEriksson]

HNGD, great looking! Reminds me a tad of Ola Englunds S7 Solar guitars.

[LaoWai]

Here she is with the rest of the gang. I gave her a good setup and she plays just Awesome! I’ll probably need to do a few adjustments once she gets acclimatized a bit more to the shanghai weather.

[S]The neck pickup did not come with springs for the adjustment screws, so I need to do something there. Bummer I didn’t catch this while I was in the US. [/S]

Correction: there must be some sort of rubber compression thinkgamabob to hold the pickup height. After sitting for a couple of days, it doesn’t flop around anymore

[LaoWai]

Now that I’ve been tapping her for a couple of months, I thought I might share some thoughts about the SL2 pro.

The fretboard, ebony, seems to have some sort of finish on it. I’d hate to guess what it is,
I know its there because there was buildup/overspray between the nut and the first fret.
Easily rubbed out with grey Scotch Brite. Seems like quality ebony though.

The fret ends are beveled at a greater angle than the USA’s, giving slightly less actual usable fret board width.
This hasn’t caused me any problems playing wise though, any more though and a smaller nut might be in order

The binding is thinner than on the USA’s making the overall neck width almost a 1/16 narrower.
I know it’s a small measurement. But you can feel the difference. I’m not implying this is negative, just different.
It’s actually very comfortable given that I have smaller hands.

The neck is oiled/raw maple; you cannot feel the transition from raw to paint where the neck meets the body.
Really a nice job here.

The body, not much to say here, its alder with a matt finish, zero quality issues, the back plates are aluminum.
No issues with the electronics.

The Floyd, this one bugs me a bit, one of the studs was cross threaded in the insert. I didn’t notice this until
after I got back to shanghai . My dealer was kind enough to ship warranty parts, but unfortunately they
were the wrong fuggin parts! I ordered OFR studs and inserts myself.

Whew! So once I got through these minor issues and gave her I good setup, I must say this is a nice guitar.
Nice low action, no buzz or dead frets, Floyd stays in perfect tune. She’s really fun to play!

Who knows maybe I picked out a lemon. Would I recommend this to others? Well, I’m on the fence!
I would 100% recommend the guitar that’s sitting next to me now, it’s fugging badass!
Whether or not these minor QC issues are the norm is the issue.

Dan

[walshula]

Nice detailed review. That guitar would look so badass with black hardware. Digging that chrome/mirrored soloist you have there also. Nice!!!

[anarkhos]

Having both an empty soloist case, and a bad case of GAS

Great review, and congrats, it looks awesome, the chrome hardware looks great with that ebony board! I wish there was a SL1 on this new pro series.

[straycat]

Nice group shot too. It looks right at home.
Slick looking guitar.

[warlok]

The Floyd, this one bugs me a bit, one of the studs was cross threaded in the insert.

WTF?? It would take quite a bit of work to pull that fuck up off.. More than a minor QC issue IMO.. Nice job Jackson..
Still good features for the money as long as you don't mind a bit of work. And yeah, nice group shot!

[psychles]

Just got my Quicksilver one two weeks ago. It's perfect and I love it.


... well, I did swap out the pickups with D'Activator and Liquifire and added a massive chunk of brass, brass claw and up-stop.
So nice of Jackson to roll these out with the JB/'59 kit which just happened to have been stock on my Pro Mod San Dimas, when I bought it... They fit nicely in there when I swapped both sets around.

Great guitar!

[LaoWai]

She’s a beauty! Any issues, or was she just badass out of the box?

[psychles]

She’s a beauty! Any issues, or was she just badass out of the box?

Thanks LaoWai - need to wrap up a couple things at work and I'll reply. There were a couple things, but nothing major... but if I didn't have the tools (or a little experience), they might have been. BRB...

Ok... So I ordered mine online to take advantage of a 15% off Labor Day sale - which means I didn't get a chance to fondle a rack (of guitars) to find the most friendly one. I wanted quicksilver, specifically the one with the black logo, but, from what I could tell, only the early ones had the black logo and the newer ones had white. Mine showed up with black logo - and nothing broken, which was a relief!

Like you found, the ends of the frets were not as "finished" as I would have hoped. It was particularly noticeable, for me, because I have been playing a 2012 Japanese Pro Mod San Dimas and it has the sweetest, most beautifully finished frets I have yet to see.



However, about a year ago, I found a really great fret file online and picked it up (for just such an emergency)... I only touched up about half a dozen of them, actually. It was pretty clean.



I also found that the SL2 was shipped with those tiny pots. I looked around for a bit and could find no benefit to using the small pots... but I could find no problem with them, either. But I walked down to the local Starving Musician (used instrument shop in the Bay Area) and opened up a later-model USA Soloist and saw that it had the large type pots, so I installed new ones in the SL2. It did require a slight re-size of the mounting holes, but nothing dramatic. I also added a Sprague Orange Drop 225p cap... All of this done while I was swapping out the JB/'59 for D'Activator/Liquifire.

Other than that, I just took some .0000 steel wool to the back of the neck (but I do that with all my guitars) and gave it a light once-over, just to get some extra oil off. Dropped on some new Infeld 10-46 strings and gave the board a once-over with Gorgomyte and adjusted the bridge height a tiny bit - checked the intonation and found it to be "close enough." Oh, I mentioned before that I also added the large brass block to the floyd, along with the brass claw. But most of these changes are upgrades (imo) that I would do to any new guitar. Really the only "issue" with the SL2 Pro was the half dozen poorly finished frets. The rest was just a standard set-up, really.

LOVE the guitar!

[psychles]

Here she is with the rest of the gang. I gave her a good setup and she plays just Awesome! I’ll probably need to do a few adjustments once she gets acclimatized a bit more to the shanghai weather.

[S]The neck pickup did not come with springs for the adjustment screws, so I need to do something there. Bummer I didn’t catch this while I was in the US. [/S]

Correction: there must be some sort of rubber compression thinkgamabob to hold the pickup height. After sitting for a couple of days, it doesn’t flop around anymore

Hey LaoWai:

The Duncans on the SL2 Pro come with a big chunk of rubberized foam (like my RG7321 stock pups did), instead of springs for the screws. When I swapped out the pups, I went the spring route... If you want to dial in more adjust-ability, I recommend removing the foam from under the pups and installing some longer screws and springs.

I have the hardware, if you like I can send over the parts you need.